ClassicalRomantic
— EugeneHalliday. Page
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Classical Romantic

Romans

We’ll start with
the classical romantic, I think — and work round
euphemistically later.

Now, the first thing is
to define the word classic and the word romantic.
And the first thing to observe is that the word romance
is really derived from the word Roman ... and Roman
itself to the Romans meant one thing, and to non-Romans meant another
thing. Now actually, the word Roman means ruling
man, the man that assays to rule an empire.

So if we were to…
I think I’ll start up here and work down the left shall we? [an
aside, referring the white paper which he draws on to illustrate his
talks] The letter R itself is the letter for kings,
for rulers, because it means to differentiate. And if we don’t
differentiate we cannot see formal differences. If we don’t see
the difference between one thing and another, we can’t begin to
put them into classes ... and if we don’t classify things, we
can’t control them.

So the first thing that
the Romans are doing, as ruling men, is to be classic ... that is to
say, they are going to classify the world. And they proceeded to do
so in fact, by sending out parties looking for other civilisations,
determining to invade them, and eventually to make them pay taxes. To
which end, they made roads and other essentials of intercommunication
of peoples.

One of the rabbis said
on one occasion, The Romans are a marvellous people. They have
made roads, and market places, and baths.

And another other rabbi
said, Yes, the roads are for them to come along. The markets are
for putting the prostitutes in; the baths are for their coming clean
after the fact; and the whole thing is designed for their own ends.

Roman
Empire

So if we look at R
as the symbol of differentiation — we try to pronounce the
letter R like a good Scotsman might — you see that it causes
the tongue to vibrate. And when the tongue vibrates it is giving you
the feeling of differentiation. In fact, if you vibrate on a
sufficiently sensitive plane, with a fine powder on it, it will
actually differentiate that powder. And the form that the powder is
shaken into is determined by the pitch of the note that you utter1.

So we let R equal
differentiation power, and we’ll use the O as circumscription.
So if we wish to do, we can draw a circle ... we’ve got a
little wandering Jewish board tonight [another aside]. Inside
it we’re going to differentiate. I’ve put the lines
wiggly inside the circle, to remind you of the vibrations of the
letter R. This circle represents the limit of empire. The M in empire
represents the substance that the imperialist is concerned with. The
differentiations are differentiations of cultures which any would-be
ruling people must study before they can take full advantage of the
subject people.

Man
itself means to measure, to evaluate. So the Ro-man means a man
or an evaluating being, who is determined to differentiate the
possibilities of a circumscribed zone. You notice that the
word empire, if you look it up in a dictionary, is related to the
word piracy. And piracy is pi-ratio again.

There’s our
centre and we just go round the circle with pi, in the earth
now-and-now, instead of by-and-by. The limit to which our authority
goes is called the limit of empire, and it is initially built by
piracy ... that is, by men running out and raiding the perimeter of
their own zone, and then subjecting peoples all here [in the
substance] to law.

Payment of Taxes

You remember we said
that the word Italia — Italy, is made out of a
reversal, Ital of Lati, the Latins. Now Lati
actually means the flat of the sword. And you’ll find in
the bible and in other references, that some people were put to the
flat of the sword and some to the edge of the sword. But the big
ruling men, the Latins, or flat-of-the-sword men, didn’t like
putting people to the edge of the sword because you could only do it
once, and they wouldn’t pay taxes afterwards. Whereas, if you
put them to the flat, it makes a lot of noise and frightens them
considerably ... and still leaves them intact to pay the taxes.

So we see that the
Roman is determined to rule, and in order to rule he must go out, he
must differentiate. And he must then proceed to order people to pay
taxes. And to this end he must not interfere too much with the tribal
systems of the people he conquers, because the unity principle of a
tribe, if broken, would also dissolve the instrument whereby he could
tax them. So the essence of good imperialism is that, when you go out
from your centre and raid another country, you should get hold of the
rulers of that country, keep them in power, so that you then have a
particular person whom you can make responsible for the payment of
the taxes.

So in fact, we find
that the Romans were not particularly bothered about the ideology of
any of the peoples that they conquered. They were only concerned with
taxation. Therefore they had no real philosophy of their own, or
religion of their own. Everything was borrowed by them later:
philosophy from the Greeks, and religion from various sources;
Egyptian and Central Eastern.

So the word romance
came to mean fictive. We find the word Roman is the
continental word, meaning a novel or fiction. And the reason was, as
the Roman was only interested in the material results of his survey
of the territory he didn’t really care what he believed or what
he said, as long as he had this comeback of material taxes. And so
gradually it became apparent to other people that the Romans would
say and do anything whatever ... to keep the taxes flowing in. So
that if a Roman defined something, they would then say, Oh, that
is a romantic statement, meaning, it isn’t true —
it’s just something said for taxation purposes ... in other
words it’s what today we will call romantic.

Now,
if we don’t see the differences between different nations —
that is, if we don’t classify nations in different ways —
we cannot really set up and support the governments inside that are
going to pay taxes. And this method of seeing the differences, and
segregating the type of activity of different peoples, is what we
call classification. [08:22]

So the classic
mode is really the mode of pure classes.

The romantic
mode is the mode of fiction.

And yet the two are so
interrelated that one passes insensibly into the other.

So if we look at the
classic Greek as an example, we find that their temples are purely
geometrical in structure. They are classic. They stand as types
of structure. And yet we find that this classic structure has come
out of a highly emotional people. Their emotionalism needed this
antithesis of cold, classic, geometrical proportion, to serve as the
stable base for their other side of nature, the emotional side ...
whereas with a rigidly logical people, with only one thing in their
heads, namely the material outcome of the situation; they really
needed the romantic mode of expression. That is, they would like,
because of their internal hardness, to have its antithesis, namely
romantic expressions ... non-classic statements. So we can find these
are like two parts of a human being.

So again, we’ll
put the human being, and we’re going to do a funny thing here.

We’ll put the
Romans down here, and we’ll put the Jews in the middle where
they belong. We’ll put the Greeks in the head, and this is a
good working division of the relation of the three.

The Romans are
concerned with the material world,

the Greeks are
concerned with the rational world,

and the Jews are
concerned with all that goes on in feeling. And it is their
job to relate these two facts which are really opposites. And one of
them, this one [belly], is the objectification of the formal content
of this one [head].

Qabalistic
Analysis

We’ll now take a
Jewish analysis, Qabalistic ... separated it out, so that it doesn’t
wander. At the top here — I’ll write the English for it —
is the Ain Soph. It’s coming down and moving there
[paper rustling].

Now this word Ain
is Hebrew, equivalent to nothing, and it’s also
equivalent to the eye. In fact the Saxon plural ain
for eyes is really the same significance. The observer
is never observed, so consciousness itself never becomes a form, and
therefore consciousness is as a nothing. It is not a thing.
So this Ain signifies the limitlessness of consciousness
itself, and the Soph is the same as the Sophia wisdom.
So Ain Soph means the limitless wisdom of the supreme not
thing, which contains all conceivable form. So that is entirely
beyond differentiation. It is simply a top-level concept, relating
together two totally different concepts ... the concept of nothing,Ain, and the concept of all forms whatever, the Soph.
So the Ain Soph signifies the dialectical opposition of all
beings, lifted to its highest intellectual level.

Now, in order to
consider being at all, we have to start below that, and we
start with the thing called the crown Kether in the Qabalah. This is
the crown above which there is no thing, but the Absolute Wisdom is
hidden in that no thing. And it appears in this crown, and this crown
is called — we’ve had it before — Big Head, White
Head, Macroprosopus ... the Great Chief. And he polarises himself as
father, and as mother of the universe. And that completes the top
triad.

Now, we have the Yod
over there, and the Heh there, of Jehovah. This is the form, this is
the field, that is the father principle, positing energy, this is the
mother principle, receptive energy. And this contains all that there
is, which may later manifest below — and all that is hidden in
there [Ain Soph], is here [in the supernal triangle] expressed and
polarised for consideration. Remember, we’re not actually doing
anything at all with the Ain Soph. What we are doing something with
at the moment, is our own minds. We are arranging, classifying
concepts, in order to be able to show just precisely what it means to
be romantic — because if our concepts correspond with reality,
we shall call them classic concepts. And if they correspond with
nothing whatever — they’re entirely fictive — we
can call them romantic concepts.

Now,
we said before that the heaven world, that’s that world
[supernal], reflects itself in matter in an upside down sense. You
remember when we did the shield and the six-pointed star, the two
triangles interlaced, we did separate them out, and say that one of
them was the reflection of the other, upside down. So in here we now
have another triad, and this has a special name [see the diagram].
[14:50]

This one is called
Atziluth, the region of supernal forms.

This one is called
Briah, the world of intelligences.

And then there’s
another one, it’s still this way up, which called the world
Yetzirah.

So this is the
container of intelligences and forms in unity, this is the world of
intelligences, this is the world of forms, and then down here —
we’ll represent it with a square — is the world, as we
know it. Now this diagram — it looks like a Christmas tree with
baubles on it — is called in Qabalah the Sephirotic tree, the
tree of the Sephiroth. Now Sephiroths plural, or Sephira,
which is the same word as the English word sphere, se phi
rasephera, you can see, remove the vowels and you’ve
got Ess Phe Ra, s-phe-re. So Sephiroths is referring to these wheels,
which are the baubles on this tree, which is the tree of life that
stands in the middle of Eden as the super concept to which we refer.
[16:10]

Now you remember that
in yoga we had an Absolute, and then we had a polarisation as Puruşa
Prakriti, as Observer and Observed. It is corresponding with this
father/mother relationship in some degree, where Prakriti, the
substantial principle is the mother, and this would then be the
observer. And yet we remember that we are observing the diagram, so
really we’re out of it. But we’re positing ourselves in
there as initiative energy, and this is receptive substance. And
these three then reflect themselves down here in the world of
intelligences, of forms, and finally Malkuth the material world ...
which is called Asia [pronounced A-see-ah], the
world of action. But action there means specifically, separated
action, because all this is fundamentally power, and power is
continuously on the move. So there’s nothing static in power,
but the K in action, the sound of K which we represent
with a C in English, signifies this separation out.

But actually we move in
impulses. If we make a smooth gesture with the arm, and then
photograph it, and then show it in slow motion on a screen, you will
actually see that there are little impulses in the movement, and this
is the meaning of this K ... it’s an impulsive world.
Our actions are separable, and observable in separation at the gross
material level.

So, this world down
here is like the gross material centre of a series of magnetic fields
... magnetic only by analogy, the magnetic field itself would
correspond roughly with this formative one. And beyond that there is
another one, the sphere of intelligence, and beyond that this
celestial sphere.

Now, in yoga parlance
we said we had a gross body, a subtle body and a causal body.

There is the gross
body [Malkuth]

here’s the
subtle, which we said was full of form, ideas [Yezirah]

here is the causal
one, the intelligences which initiate [Briah]

and this is the
divine one [Atziluth].

So everything above
that line is really not individual at all, but everything below that
line can be considered as individual. And we then see the meaning of
the hermetic statement, as above, so below. There is nothing
below, except a reflection of the possibilities of the Ain Soph, of
the inimitable wisdom, polarising itself, and then the intelligent
aspect of those things mobilising themselves, forming themselves, and
finally by absorption of gross matter, objectifying themselves at the
gross material level.

Now when we’ve
made that tree, we’ve really classified the universe in a
convenient way. If the classification corresponds with reality, then
it is opposite to the concept of romanticism, where it does not
correspond. Now we find in fact in history a continuous interplay
between this romantic principle, in the sense of fiction ... and the
classic, in the sense of eternal form. [19:49]

Logos and Ratio

Now the essential thing
about the classic for a European mind to consider, is that it
corresponds roughly with the Platonic sphere of ideas. When we talk
about classic thought, or classic education, we’re talking
about, really, a heritage of the Greeks as thinkers, rational. And if
you remember the top concept of the Greeks was the concept of the
logos, the logos has the log in it — and it was that original
log which was a tree rolling along, which gave birth to

the wheel,

the lever,

friction,

fire,

and reason.

So out of the one
concept, there came the ratio of all things.

Now we can show, even
scientifically, that the concept of the logos is valid for
experimental purposes as a control idea, that everything which exists
in the world, is actually circumscribed, as a finite. And that
therefore, there is a ratio of its parts to its wholeness and this we
would call its internal logic value, or the inherent logic of it. So
that all that we can reduce fundamentally to geometrical structures
which are inherent in the universe, we call classic. And in
opposition, we will call romantic all those distortions of
such proportions which frees the feeling side of the nature, or the
part of the nature that doesn’t want to be bothered with
universal reason. [21:34]

Stoics

To see the difference,
we can examine the Stoics as philosophers. The Stoics believed that
the universe was logical, and they believed that a logical man must
behave properly. And therefore, they themselves tried to conform with
the logical principle of the universe, and they became tremendously
strong as individuals. In fact, at the time of the appearance of
Christianity, we find the Romans have been over to Greece and
overthrown it, they’ve been out into Egypt, into the
middle-east, and we find stoic Greek philosophers serving as tutors
in Roman families.

Now stoicism could
never have become a popular religion because it required a hardness
in its practitioner. The man must be logical, and he must
deliberately make his life conform to the inherent logic of the
universe. So it quite obviously was a religion only for individuals
with great strength. So that it was never a serious threat to
Christianity, which does not require anything whatever from an
individual ... other than faith.

We find, in fact, that
when the Romans want an integrating religion for a disintegrating
civilisation, they cannot do better than find a religion that imposes
nothing in the way of effort or study requirement on the participant
in it, but a simple act of faith. Only believe and it shall be.
So it was a very convenient religion — this doesn’t
invalidate its fundamental truth — it was a very convenient
religion for a ruling people. Whereas the ideal of the stoics would
have been quite incapable of unifying large numbers of people.

So the individual
stoics became very, very hard. And they made their lives very, very
rational. So that, in a sense, a real Stoic was like a piece of logic
on earth — he believed in a kind of logical determinism. And
the whole of his life, he forced into a logical pattern. And that
kind of man — we could call him a classic man if we
wanted to — he contains in himself embodied geometry. Something
like the concept in Roman Catholicism in convents, of a nun called a
living roux, who has so been conditioned in her reflexes that she
constitutes merely a machine which reacts to stimuli in a preordained
pattern ... in this case imposed from above by authorities
terrestrial, and in the case of the stoics, imposed on the stoics by
their concept of logic.

So in opposition to
them were other people who said, Well, even though logic is what
it is, nevertheless it is only a human product. Now this isn’t
true, it isn’t only a human product. It pre-exists humanity.
The circle, the sphere, pre-exists all that we call ‘organic
beings today on earth.’ Nevertheless there were men who said,
Really, man is the centre, man is the measure of all things. And
therefore, really, he can make his own rules, because it is for man
to decide whether something is or is not logical. The man who
said that got into trouble in ways quite other than the way the
stoics did. But in fact, we find a continuous conflict going on,
between:

The men who
believe the universe is essentially reasonable, and who try to
conform with that reason

And the other men,
the wilful men down here, who believe that that reason is a
construct of a wilful being.

Now we know that if we
push any idea whatever to its conclusion, it will turn into its
opposite. So we know that if we take the Greek idea of the pure
Logos, we will find that that Logos has — as in the case of
this Qabalistic diagram here — produced a world of supernal
form, of celestial form, pre-existing the world as we know it, and
has imposed itself by the Absolute Will, through ideas, into matter.

So we place at the top
— above the form of the Greeks, above that Logos — we
will place the Absolute Will ... which is the same Will that the
Romans pretend to embody in their divine emperors. So we see now, if
we put down here Will as a principle, and Reason as a principle, we
see that the opposition between the two is unbridgeable, in the sense
that we cannot rub one of them out. [26:43]

There is reason in the
universe, and there is also Will in the universe. And between the two
are jammed the Jews in the body. And they are an emotional, feeling
people, who’ve been jammed between reason and wilfulness, have
tried to resolve the problems of that relationship. And we find that
the people called the Jews have, in fact, been pushed by these two
other forces, and made to leave their own centre and wander about
getting two kinds of experience.

If we look at the
history of the Jews in the Old Testament, we find them pushed from
one country to another. And from being a simple little tribe with a
tribal divinity, they were forced by their experiences and by their
captivities to absorb ideas from other nations ... and these ideas
being of two kinds, rational ideas, and ideas of power, of Will. And
they gradually assimilate the concept of the Will in their relations
with these ruling people, and the concept of reason with the others,
and they fuse it together in feeling. And then they do not express it
in the way either of those two terms can. [28:09]

Classic / Romantic Migration

So in a man we will say
the reason in his head is Greek. And we know what happened to the
Greeks: they were defeated by the Romans. So we can say that the
Greeks inside you must also be defeated by the Romans. Well, we know
that in the heart here is the centre of the blood system, and that
this is circulating through the body, and going into the Roman lands,
and then carving into the Greek lands, and continuously carrying with
it certain chemicals which influence every part of the body.

So that if we examine
the chemistry of the body in the Roman land, and the chemistry of the
body in the Greek land, it isn’t the same chemistry. In other
words, this blood inside a human individual is playing a similar role
to the role of the Jews as a people in the human race. Just as the
Jews wandered about and came into contact with other people, so the
blood wanders about in the body and certain organs’ internal
secretions change the quality of it, so that when it travels back to
where it was, it is no longer the same thing that it was when it
left, and it is modifying it. In the same way, the Jews collected
ideas from all over the world, and were dispersed in order to collect
them, and then they gathered them together again. And in their
gathering together of those ideas, they then had to take the end
result of their wanderings, and present it back to the world as a
world view ... in the same way that the blood is the equilibrating
factor in the body, by collecting these chemicals and then
distributing them throughout the body. [29:55]

Those chemical
messengers, those hormones and so on, are entirely Yiddish in this
sense. In fact we can say that the wandering Jew, is that wandering
blood stream. And we know that the nervous system itself is largely
Greek ... that is to say, it is concerned with imposing form onto the
whole being. And we know that the blood is the medium of the feeling
life, which is Jewish, and we know that the impulses of aggression,
material, come from down below in the Roman land. So we have a good,
balanced analogy between the parts of the human body, and those three
types of people. No matter where we go, we will always find a
tendency to be stressed in a given nation, either here, here or here.
And if we were to write down all the names of the peoples in the Old
Testament, and then trace them through as far as we can into modern
times, we will find that the people derived from their progenitors in
the bible are still manifesting the same characteristic that they did
then.

For instance we know
that after the fall of Troy, there was a migration of those peoples.
Those peoples moved away from Troy, and they appear in Italy later,
in southern Italy. And we find some of them appearing in Europe. And
we find that Paris — who was a fellow who ran away with Helen
if you remember — is also the name of the capitol city of the
people in Europe, namely the French, who pretend to be reasonable. In
other words, these French people today are the manifestation, the
objectification, of the Greek spirit of reason. And we find that each
biological type is carrying inside itself the chemistry of its own
world view, and that by inter-marriages, these different world views
are mingled, and eventually produce some kind of being with a
capacity for understanding many nations.

So we have this simple
opposition between the purely rational, corresponding with
geometrical principles which are quite rigid. A triangle has three
sides ... that is a logical statement. It has three angles inside ...
three the other side if we want. It encloses a zone. The logic of
that is one thing. But if we wish to be romantic about it, we can
talk about something which is not really a triangle, and call it a
triangle. So if we like to say this triangle will now be applied in
this situation — that’s Tom, that’s Dick and that’s
Harry, although really this is Tom, that’s Dick and that’s
Harry. Tom, Dick and Harry — we could call them, if we wished,
the three points of the triangle. We could call them if we wish —
they’re peculiar fellows — an example of the eternal
triangle in a love affair.

Now as we are moving
away from the purely geometrical significance, we are moving away
from its classic value, its classification value, and it’s
becoming vaguer in its application. And as it becomes less and less
rigidly logical, it reaches a point at which we decide to call it
romantic ... that is, it’s becoming fictive, that is, that the
application is becoming more and more tenuous, more and more
difficult to apply. [33:37]

So I think that will do
for the rough outline of the opposition between the classic and the
romantic. If we simply equate the romantic with the fictive, roman
is still German and French for this fictive concept. The word for a
novel in Germany is roman, and even in Italian, romanza
has exactly the same value, but it implies fictiveness ... non-rigid,
non-logical geometrical structure.

So when we come to
consider this diagram here, we can consider it from one point of view
as a purely classic diagram, when we see its underlying geometry.
There is a triad here, there is its reflection below, there is a
movement of that thing to further objectification, and then finally
the concreting of it on the gross earth. And that is entirely a
classic diagram.

Here is all that is in
the celestial or supernal world, here is its first inversion in
matter, appearing as embodied intelligences, the world of Briah —
B. R. I. A. H.

And then those embodied
intelligences, proceed to formulate themselves in the world called
Yetzirah. It is those intelligences who formulate themselves
internally in the same way that an intelligent egg puts the
divisions, the walls, inside itself before it develops into an
embryo. And it is that same form which then, by absorbing gross
matter, turns itself into a grossly objectified being. So that is a
purely classic concept.

Now, if we were to get
a manuscript of a couple of hundred years ago with this tree drawn in
it, we would find it not expressed in general in its purely classic
form, but we will find a drawing of a man in here with lots of
whiskers, and the statement that his name is Mr. Whitehead. It
actually says his name, Mr. Whitehead in here, you see. And on this
side there’s a drawing of another man in the costume of the
period, and written on top is father. And in here there’s
a drawing of a lady of the period, with the appropriate neckline, and
she’s called mother.

This is Abba, this is
Aima ... that’s father, that’s mother.

And in each one of
these we find a particular concept, with a pretty picture on it, and
we find connecting lines running down, across all of these things ...
and they run into each other. And then on top of it here, we find a
figure of a man, with his arms holding those two, his body coming
down here, standing on this, and we find right in the bottom is a
picture of another girl, who is called the Heh in exile, the
final Heh of the name Jehovah, and it symbolises the spirit which has
now got itself embodied at the gross material level. And all the
humanising of this diagram is romantic, because it really diverts us
from the fundamental true geometry upon which it is based. So that if
you were to see that diagram as it stands, you wouldn’t tend to
be diverted into a consideration of merely human relations by it. But
if you saw this one, with pretty pictures drawn into each circle, you
could easily be misled into thinking that it had something to do with
human beings as such.

But it has not. [37:42]

The diagram has to do
with universal form, in its totality and prime unity, and then the
selection — I shall draw that supernal triangle in the middle
like this, and say — Imagine that inside there, there are
waves reflecting from each side. Then we will find that inside
there, there are triangles. And each one of those small triangles is
now down here, a separate entity called an intelligence. In the same
way if we were to draw a circle, and let it vibrate from its centre,
it would be covered in ripples very quickly. And as we’ve
actually seen in our bowl of water experiments, in certain
periodicities it will break up into little wheels, or into little six
pointed figures of impulsations. That it has six impulses to each
wheel is the original of the word existence — ex-istere, out of
six. So if we take one of those little triangles and draw it inside
here, we can call it one of the intelligences considered in
separation, which in the supernal, celestial triangle, is considered
simultaneously with the others. So in this one all triangles are
considered in their essential unity, and in this one they are
considered as separate intelligences [world of intelligences
triangle]. In this one they are considered as separate formative
beings, where the intelligences are beginning to form themselves
inside [world of forms triangle], and in this one, they have
absorbed matter, and are now what we know them to be ... gross
material beings [Malkuth]. And this is true, whether they are
animal or vegetable or human. [39:42]

Absorption of Matter - The Fall of Adam

Now this gross material
world is the world that we don’t really have an essential
relation with, ultimately. We know that we have the power to take
material food and to pack it into a little egg, and develop that egg
into an embryo, and that into a human being. And we know, we’ve
done this entirely by pushing matter into it from outside, which does
not essentially belong to it — which means that the gross
material that we eat is not really our own essence. And therefore, we
are in relation, in fact, on earth, with a principle, the material
principle, that’s really nothing to do with us.

Now, the fall of Adam
refers to the point where this formative triangle, where Adam’s
made, was brought into contact with the gross material world, and the
gross material world stimulated this triad, so that it then began to
absorb matter. Now prior to The Fall, Adam was not a gross material
being. Adam was really a being in the world of forms, in the subtle
world. He was a being similar to the beings you experience in the
dream world, similar to the beings that spiritualist mediums contact.
He lived in this world, and because of the stimulus value of the
material world, he began to absorb it, and it is this material world
that is called, in the Genesis story, the serpent, which beguiled
Eve. [41:25]

Now if we remember that
Eve is the substantial aspect, that’s the mother principle,
there’s Adam, that’s Adam Supernal the Divine Adam, Adam
Kadmon. This is the substantial aspect. We know that it is through
the substantial side of ourselves that we are subject to stimuli,
that there is a linkage between our mental life, and the quality of
the stimulus that comes to us, and therefore we know that it will be
through the substantial side of our nature that we are subjected to
the temptation ... and through which we fall: whereas the other side
of our nature, which has to do with our reason, is not so easily
stimulated in the absence of a material body.

So the first thing that
happens is the stimulation of the substantial, lower part of this
triangle, which represents the material, the matrix aspect of our
total being. Therefore the serpent nature, the gross material
stimulus, stimulated Eve first, and then spreading through the
substance, came up here into the world of formations and reasons, to
the point where the intelligence — where this triad touches
this one — the intelligence itself became interested in the
quality of the stimulus, and then began to Will down to see what is
going on. Now it is this Will into material experience that is the
cause of what we call The Fall. Because once it has gone into there,
its understanding which in this world is the pure reflection of the
celestial, is now tainted with the vibrations that come from below.
So instead of him seeing the pure geometry, which is reflected in
this top level individual being from this celestial, he now has
become a romantic ... that is to say, his fundamental geometry has
become distorted by the quality of the vibrations from below. [43:40]

We
know, as a matter of fact, that if a man is being quite reasonable,
and we assail him with various perfumes, and different things to eat
and drink and so on, the actual stimuli from these substances can so
change the quality of his thought processes, that his reason is
covered over with a kind of movement, a vibration in his body. So
that he is turned from a classic, reflecting being, to a romantic,
earth directed being.

So, in general, we had
this statement romance = fiction, that the classic refers to
fundamental geometry, that it works all through history in a battle
between the two, because man is actually between the two worlds.

We had the world
of absolute form, in its unanalysed unity.

We had the world
individuated here for each being, but still reflecting that
celestial reason,

And we had the
gross material world below, stimulating this lower triad of the
forms which appear in the subtle world as ideas.

And if we look at the
four ages, in all the myths and archaic references, we can see:

The golden age,

The silver age,

The copper age and

The iron age.

And we are in the age
now where material stimuli hitting upon us condition our thought
processes. You know that when you try to think, you think with ideas,
and with words tied to ideas. So that your vocabulary and the things
they represent actually condition the mode of activity of your subtle
body, that is your idea body, and that’s flowing into the gross
material body, and determining the direction of activity of the
physical body.

So there is the problem
left for us. This evening we try to climb up to consider this
celestial one, and we have a gross body which is useful to us,
because by means of it we can demonstrate what we are talking about.

This is a gross
material piece of black chalk. By means of it I’ve made a gross
material diagram on gross material paper, but the significance we’re
imparting to that gross material, is not gross material. The first
level, above the gross matter of the chalk, is the form. I put down
there the letter ‘S’ to symbolise the stimulus nature —
‘S’ for stimulus. And that stimulus causes reactions from
below, from the gross material world, to appear in this world of
ideas of the individual. So that man’s ideas are being
conditioned by external stimuli. We know it — and at the same
time we don’t know it.

We know it,
because advertising goes on, and political propaganda goes on.

But we don’t
know it because we don’t really realise that this is going on
to the point of defending ourselves against it.

Now, this form down
here, participates in some way with the nature of the gross material
world, and mediates between the intelligence world and the gross
matter. And therefore, it is through this form that we can begin to
order the reactions that occur inside the mind as idea-bearer;
because even romanticism, if ordered, will give birth to classicism.
If we get an untruth, and show in what way it is untrue, it becomes a
means of truth. So that if we find a perfectly nonsensical statement,
and we feel the clang when it is presented to us, that it clangs in
us somewhere as false, means that we have truth inside ourselves to
serve as a standard. So it doesn’t matter how romantic somebody
becomes, the more romantic they become, the more they will refute
themselves, and when the refutation is complete, we then are able to
discard the fantasy, and to say, What is the principle, which
belongs in this world, which gave birth to all the fantasy?

If
we remember the test line, qui bono — to whom the
good — if somebody comes with a romantic statement, we say
to ourselves, who is going to get the benefit of this statement.
And we then proceed to analyse the statement in terms of who gets the
benefit. And then we can sort out what is romantic in it, and what is
classic. The classic is the eternal geometrical form, the romantic is
this private, terrestrial influence and purpose. [49:05]

Reflexive Self-consciousness

So it is in this world,
in the world of ideas, that it is possible for us to turn ourselves
away from the gross material body, and to consider the intelligence
above. It is this process that we call Reflexive Self-consciousness.

A stimulus comes to you
in the physical body. It may be just an itch on the back of your
hand. It’s good enough. You then say to yourself, I know
that there is an itch on the back of my hand, and then, I know
that I know. When you say, I know that I know, you are
going like this: here’s your intelligence,

There is an itch, on the back of my hand, you’ve defined
itch in this world.

And then, I know there is an itch.

And then, I know that I know there is an itch.

So you’ve
actually carried back your intelligence to itself. And it is this
ability to bring consciousness back to itself that we call reflexion
with an X not with a C.T. Remember the difference. Reflect, and
reflex.

Reflect is when a light hits a surface like a mirror and bounces
off,

And reflex is when it bends back on itself.

So it isn’t
reflecting we want, because that is superficial. It is reflexion, a
bending back of the Consciousness upon itself. If we can just, even
for a little minute, turn consciousness
onto itself, so that it becomes its own object as a finite, then we
have released ourselves from the tyranny of ideas, and from the
stimulus of the gross material world. It is then only one jump to
turn round and look into that Absolute Mirror. That is the great
wisdom mirror, which contains all the forms, and all the inventions,
and the props of all the best plays that are going to be written in
the future. So if you can actually turn round onto it, you’re
bound to get a good idea. But you can’t turn and look at that
until you first turn away from that, reduce the stimulus to an idea,
and then turn the idea back onto consciousness, and then state to
yourself, know that I know. Then in that state I know that
I know, you remember the fundamental absolute geometry of all
beings, and hold it. And at that moment the whole body and soul and
spirit becomes unified. And it is in such a state that it is said,
one can see in the supernal mirror2.
It is this that is signified by the Cosmic Mary, the assumed Mary, of
Catholicism, which is the mirror of forms, in which this abyssal
being, the Ain Soph, reflects itself to show the Absolute
Potentialities of All Being whatever.

So
that diagram is simply an extension of the two interlaced triangles
of the Mogen Dovid, of this David’s Shield. And we can remind
ourselves, when we look at those two interlaced triangles, of this
one. We can, if we like, draw a circle round that, and we have two
triangles and another one here round it with a circle to bind them
together, and we can put a square round that, and that square now
symbolises the gross material body. So if we then write that upon a
card, and look at it and then ask ourselves while we are looking at
it, How much of consciousness is at the moment being determined by
my gross material condition?

Pain and Pleasure

Supposing I was sitting
on a pin. There is pain in the physical body. But actually the
concept of the merely material is not a concept which you can apply
the term perceiver of pain. Pain is a subjective statement.
Pain doesn’t belong in matter at all. It belongs in sentiency,
in the field. And this is why such things as anaesthesia can occur in
mental disorders: that no matter how much you may stimulate the gross
material body, nevertheless the owner of that body may say, I
can’t feel anything.

You say, Well,
you’re not well, you’re mentally disordered, because you
should feel something because everybody does when we do this. And
statistics say you aught to feel it.

But if he’s
withdrawn from the gross material body, you could burn it, you could
cut it up, and he wouldn’t feel anything about it —
simply because he would not be identified with it.

So, as we saw before,
the fact that we insert this matter into us by eating, shows that it
does not essentially belong to us, and therefore we shan’t be
surprised to see that the physical body as matter is not the thing
that feels the pain ... it is simply the thing that serves as the
point of reaction to a stimulus, which if we identify with, then we
shall define it as painful. [54:39]

And pain means a point
of negation. Remember that ‘ain’ there, symbolises
negation, nothingness. Pain itself means point of negation,
that point in which we say, No, I don’t want it. So the
same situation exactly can be pleasurable to one person and painful
to another, because people are so constituted that some things are
very delightful to them which would be very painful to other people.
And that man would define the situation as pain only if he was
refusing it from the centre of his being. And the same situation
exactly he would not define as pain, if he were accepting it ...
because pain means to refuse.

So we’ll find in
the case of masochistic and sadistic people, that they are actually
enjoying things which other people call painful. So that somebody
would say, He is a sadist, he’s experiencing pleasure out of
pain. But really it isn’t pain to him, it’s pleasure.
His sensorium is reacting in a certain way, and by his mode of
looking at it he’s deriving pleasure. Thus he can actually
derived pleasure, even from inflicting on his own body stimuli that
in another state of consciousness he would not inflict. And therefore
he doesn’t define them as painful to him, though it looks like
it to other people.

The Body of Light

So our tree of life,
this is the tree standing in the centre of the Garden of Eden, and
remember we said, Eden is the same thing as no judgement,
beyond judgement, and we are going to put that tree inside it.
So we’re drawing a line to symbolise the wall of Eden, and then
we’re going to put the tree inside it. Now, there’s the
tree, and it’s said that when Adam had eaten of this fruit in
response to the stimulus from below, he then knew he was naked. You
see, prior to that time, he was living in this world [Yetzirah], and
his body was actually so suffused with light, that you couldn’t
see it in the sense that you could see this gross material body. His
centres of power, his genitalia, were just centres of light. This has
something to do with mysterious use of the euphemistic proud.
All centres of generation in the body are actually broadcasting
energies which, to a camera sensitive to those vibrations, would be
registered as light. So that all the centres of generation in the
pre-fall Adam were simply zones from which energy flew out as masses
of light, and nothing could be seen because he was clothed in light.
You find this reference to ‘clothed with the sun’ in the
Revelation, and so on3.
Clothed with light, because the energies were not blocked by the
opaque matter, but were actually coming out of the body.

I’ve actually
seen myself men in certain conditions of excitement, where the
energies from inside have been conjured out by magical ritual, and
then their bodies have glowed until you couldn’t see the forms
of the physical body, so that the energy coming out is coming out too
strongly for you to be able to focus on the gross matter in the
middle of it.

So at that level Adam,
prior to the Fall, was clothed in light. But when he ate of that
gross material world, the light died down in him, that is, he’d
actually lowered his frequency. He then had a gross material body
that was opaque, and he could see all the poor fallen degenerated
centres that had previously been given giving out energy, now shrunk
down to material things, and looking rather horrid ... certainly not
classic in form. But he then became ashamed of himself, and hid
himself, and God is represented in that myth as coming and saying to
him, What have you done? And he blames the woman. And the
woman blames the serpent, the stimulus situation. The situation of
the serpent, the stimulus situation, is then cursed, and from that
moment, he is thrown out, Adam is thrown out of the Garden of Eden,
out of the land of non-judgement. And the tree of life which is in
the midst of it, which could release him from all this condition, is
closed to him until the consummation of days.

He’s now got to
go out into the world and dig in gross material world. It’s
said, With the sweat of thy brow shall eat bread4.
Before that time, he didn’t need to dig, because he was
actually receiving the same energy — that we have to get out of
digging, and food and so on — from direct cosmic radiation. We
were simply being fed by light. Light is still the stuff we feed on,
only we get it the hard way.

The Tree of Life

So he then went out and
began to dig in material world and he’s been digging right up
to now, and he’s still at it. Meanwhile inside the land of
no-judgement is the tree of life. And round here it is said, at the
gates thereof, there is an angel with a fiery sword. And that fiery
sword is turning in all directions to keep Adam from the tree of
life. Now if we remember, turning in all directions is another way of
talking about a sphere, isn’t it? It really means a sphere of
influence, of energy in the body, there is in the body a spinal axis,
and along that axis there are zones of influence. And inside certain
energy centres in the body, the tree of life is still there. There’s
actually a little part in the brain that’s called the tree of
life, and it is related at that level, we will call that in the
physical economy, the supernal level. And there’s a
little arrow ?????? with the tree of life up there. And there are
connections there with different parts of the… [1:01:06]

[break in recording]

….of the word or
ordering principle.

So it tells us that if
we penetrate beyond all partial judgements into the centre of
dialectical principle — because not to judge is the same
thing as to judge contraries all the time, to say the high is
low, the near is far, the principle of Zen — to call everything
in terms of opposites, is to force the mind back into the primary
unity, which it was in before it polarised itself as good and bad.
Because remember that the tree of good and evil was the one he was
told not to eat. And good and evil means to say, This thing
is good, it is not bad. That’s Aristotelian logic. It
should be said of anything whatever, This thing is good/bad,
bad/good. Because it is:

in relation to
something it’s perfectly good,

in relation to
something else, it’s bad,

in relation to
that to which it is good in one time, it’s going to be bad at
another time.

And at different levels
of the same being, at the same moment it’s good and bad. So we
can get a certain chemical, and you say, this is good for removing
symptom of a certain disease. So you inject it, and that symptom
disappears, and another one appears in another part of the body. It
is a side product of the chemical that’s been injected. And so
by such methods, symptoms can be forced to change, and every time the
symptom changes, you can write down, Cured of that [laughter
from the audience]. And when that occurs, the symptom in changing its
form is still precisely what it was in this world ... namely a power
capable of polarising itself in any way whatever. So that even a
bacterium, if we examine it very carefully, find what it doesn’t
like, get ICI to make it, and then squirt it on it, and keep
squirting it on it ... constant stimulation is no stimulation. The
supernal correspondent of that bacterium will make itself a modified
form. So that DDT won’t affect the insects that it was designed
for, and so on. So that today, even the threat that malaria might
come back.

They’re doing
terrible things, you see ... they hit back. They hit back, because
all forms exist forever in eternity, and they will continuously
re-invade all territories as fast as man pushes them out. So, in the
land of Eden, in the land of no judgement, if we assert that there is
no good or bad, of which we can assert absolutely, This is good
and this is bad. So we transcend that kind of thinking, and we
say, We refuse to use concepts of good and bad in relation to
finites, Absolutely. We can still say that a screwdriver is
better than a hammer for driving a screw, but, we’ve said, For
what and under what conditions it is good. We’ve not made
the statement, The screwdriver’s a good thing, because
in actual fact, we could show that historically it’s been in
many cases, very, very bad.

I remember Tom
Slaughter once murdered a man with a tent peg, and knocking it in his
ear. So we could prove from that that tent pegs, like flick knives,
should be made illegal. 1:04:55

Now, have we any
particular questions? Has that dealt with the classic and romantic?

There’s one thing
we can say about that. You know, take the eighteenth century, the Age
of Enlightenment — the Aufklären kunst ermunst,
when they were clearly using this up. What they do for the time
being, the reasonable men who writes a complete philosophy, like
Leibnitz or Spinoza or somebody, they deliberately ignore the
capacity that human beings have for telling lies, and for mocking the
thing up. So they produce a perfectly sound, logical system, of a
world that could exist if it weren’t for all the people that
are stopping it. And then they get upset because these people will
persist in interfering in it.

So every time the men
set up a philosophical system which is absolutely complete, like the
system of Spinoza, which is perfect — you couldn’t write
a better and more unific system, than Spinoza’s — and
after all said and done in the very same period, and this is always
so, right in the middle of them, is this terrible romantic activity
going on. And people are running about say in the period of William
Blake, seeing fairies and painting them in oils. We get the school of
William Blake and Samuel Palmer and so on in a period when they’re
concerned, like Blake was with the geometry of this structure,
nevertheless feeling that that geometry is driven by Absolute Will,
and that that Absolute Will can bend that triangle and fold it any
way it wants, and is doing so. [1:06:42]

So we find in the very
same period when people are trying to build perfectly self-consistent
systems of philosophy, other people called artists are rushing about
saying they’ve just seen a fairy in the dell. Or William Blake
himself has looked at a fairy’s wedding on one occasion, and
he’s looked at grains of sand, and found every one of them is a
little man ... and that, right in the middle of a period giving birth
to rational systems.

So, if we remember that
a being has an inside and an out we can write, if we like, inside
there classic, and outside there romantic. So, we can say of another
being, if he’s classic on the outside ... he’s romantic
on the inside. So we can actually say of any given being who exhibits
a characteristic on the outside, that because of the nature of
polarity he is exactly the contrary on the inside.

For instance all the
classic scholars I know, I know quite a few, they’re all
homosexuals, and pro-Greek, and highly fantastic. And they’re
very nice fellows, but the whole of their external is concerned with
quotations from the Greek classics, from the great Greek playwrights,
and so on. And they’re absolutely fantastic on the inside. And
on the other hand, I know nice, some businessmen, who are very
romantic on the outside, and hard as nails on the inside. We find
pillars of Christian Romanticism, in big business full of schemes for
benefitting the poor. And inside they’re busy getting the
capitol so they can help them. And it’s this dialectical
relationship is necessary because a being is polarised. And you
cannot express your totality at once, because that would void your
internal.

It’s
a very good thing to try as an experiment. It’s a dangerous
experiment, so you should go in a room where there’s no
furniture, and no other people. And you then try to express, in
action, whatever occurs to you. Best to pad the walls [laughter from
the audience] …first. Because you will then find that so many
of the impulses in you contradict themselves and would destroy you,
that you would give them up. And on the other hand, if you then tried
to conform to the principle of reason exactly another thing
would happen to you, and you’d that you’d have to give
that up. Because absolute Ain-Sophery here, this inimitable wisdom,
appears here in polar relation, and then in the individual
intelligence there is no possibility whatever for an existent
individual to escape polarity. So that what he’s doing on the
outside, at that precise moment he’s not doing on the inside
... which is the meaning of this Eden function and what Adam should
not have done. When he defined the thing as taboo as bad, not to be
done on the outside, he had thereby created a fantasy about it on the
inside ... which is the basis of all modern psychology.

The prim person is
a hotbed of fantasy on the inside.

And that fantastic
person on the outside, is struggling like mad to get hold of a
principle on the inside.

So in fact we find,
running about in society men that are quite unreliable externally,
they won’t do this and they won’t do that, and yet they
are the men that are apparently, according to themselves and their
inner belief, searching for the truth. And this internal search for
the truth makes them externally, totally unreliable. And on the other
hand the man that applies himself to the gross material truth, and
gets on with it on the outside, becomes progressively more fantastic
on the inside.

Samuel Butler’s
Way of All Flesh is an example of a tower of respectability
who feels safe because he’s carried all his principle to the
outside, and then he comes in contact with a little piece of fantasy
and that stimulates him, and then the internal fantasy springs from
his hidden centre, goes right through the being, and destroys him.

So if we remember this
necessary polar relation of ourselves, we will stop this kind of
self-condemnation that goes on, and the condemnation of others
follows automatically, for condemning themselves and condemning
others.

Now you see the
dialectical thing is this: if you see the essential polar relation,
you will have to condemn condemning ... in yourself. And at the same
time, this condemnation must be stopped. Because whatever you do, you
are always doing the opposite. The thing that you do consciously is
immediately inverted unconsciously.

We’ve said
before, that if we take this as the type of an egg and then subdivide
it, then every little subdivision is exactly the same substance as
the original, and as the original was itself a vehicle of
intelligence, so is every little cell. And each little cell, wherever
there’s a membrane in the body separating that part of that
body from another, we have a subsidiary intelligence, an entity with
its own purpose, and it will fight and argue with the rest of the
body.

So if we make a
decision down there to be good: supposing that represents sexual
behaviour and a man decides to be good, there, well, the chemistry of
that relation through this Yiddisher wanderer here, is carried all
through the body. So a strange situation is developed there, and the
chemistry of the rest of the body is changed, so other parts of the
body are saying, We’re not getting any of that situation
that we used to have, that we thought was essential to our
well-being. So they start sending crazy messages down, and the
result is the thing he is trying to do becomes impossible, or if he
tries to stop doing something, it becomes inevitable. The mere fact
that he defines it is to make it an enemy.

Eden means don’t
define it. [1:13:10]

All the troubles of the
world are caused by somebody defining it. Therefore in the Golden
Age, this one, in the supernal world, it says in the Tao Teh King, in
the golden age, people spontaneously did what should have been done,
but, after that, there was a degeneration. This has to do with the
time process. Then the men began to make rules about what should be
done. Now, that’s the first division, rational, saying we
are going to make rules about what ought to be done. That’s
the Silver Age.

Then they said, Now
we’ve made the rules, we must join those things together, that
we think ought to be together. That’s the Copper Age,
copulation age, where things are joined together by arbitrary
decisions from above.

And then, as there was
resistance from other beings to these things being joined together,
we entered into the Iron Age. We took out the sword and started
sloshing everyone that disagreed with our definition.

And yet the whole man
can only be regained by completely abandoning all that type of
definition, and asserting our Absolute prior unity behind all
polarities.

[Khen Ratcliffe] Why, in the Golden Age, would they consider it
beneficial to reflect in the Silver Age, when I assume that in going
from the Golden Age into the Silver Age, they must have seen a
benefit in reflecting back on it…..

Well, consider this
very carefully: that this is simultaneous and eternal, all of it.

That Golden Age
exists now. There is a level of our being where we are actually
Edenic, and don’t make such stupid statements.

And underneath it,
there is a Silver Age, a period where we do think and define.

And
underneath that state where we want to join things together, and
separate them ... though God hasn’t done, we do.

And then the
application in the gross world.

And because the whole
is one, yet is all power, and the essential nature of power is to
move, there is a continuous flux from top to bottom. So, the very
nature of power itself is to pass from this spontaneous non-judgement
state, through the state of judgement, divisions, executions, and
then back again.

With the added memory.

With the added memory.
So that it is said that these four Yugas5,
these four great ages, follow each other in eternal succession.

Seeing them serially is what would create the problem, of course.

Seeing serially creates
the problem, why did they do it? Because they see the inherent nature
of power and they realise there’s nothing but power, is this:
the static concept cannot be applied to it. Therefore it is
continuously changing through phases. Each phase appears in the
historic process as a Zeitgeist, a spirit of the time which
determines exactly what people in general are going to do. And
because it determines in general what people are going to do, it
follows that it is also possible that some few can do the contrary.

It is possible for us
in this room for instance to consider the real meaning of this,
because millions of people are not interested ... simply because of
that. And it is for this reason that we should never descend into the
Dan land, and we should stay in the Eden land. So we shouldn’t
try to make millions of people see this point of view, although we
know it’s true. So that you wouldn’t make an odious
comparison, and say, All the people that are working on the idea I
am working on are good people. The others are stupid.

Rather, you say what it
says in the Tao, Fools are the instruments whereby the wise
perfect themselves. So thereby you’re not glad that there
are so many millions of people working in the other direction. You’re
just recognizing that they are, and because of that you are moving in
the contrary direction ... because of polar fact. You know how, say,
an electric cable under the sea, and a current goes in one direction
through the core, and in another direction through the case. It’s
the same with a ray of light from the sun actually ... it’s
polarised, so the inside and outside of it are opposite.

If we like to call for
the moment the core of it positive, then the other part would be
negative. And we would imagine that if masses of people were going
along that way, a few can go down the core that way ... simply
because the many are going along. And if we remember that a charge
distributes itself evenly over a surface, so that if we get a sphere
and charge it, the charge will disperse itself over the whole surface
of the sphere and there will then be nothing inside it. In the same
way, the mass of the thing is a guarantee that not that is on
the inside.

So we transcend all the
good/evil significances of ordinary speech in it. And we’re not
delighted and crowing over the fact that millions of people are going
in the contrary direction, we simply recognise that it is so, and
then get on with our own work, which depends on the fact that they
are going the other way.

[Indistinct question]

Yes. [?? 1:18:14]

What is it in the nature of experience, what happens because of
the nature of experience, that you want to go back?

It’s simply that
you’ve been repulsed by events. Remember that if you always got
your own way, you would never reflect.

It isn’t the fact that we don’t always get our own way
and make us want to go back?

Oh yes. That’s
the guarantee. That’s why it is said that god has eternity to
wait in, so he doesn’t care how many times we hit our head
against the wall. Eventually we do what we call repenting, and
he was there all the time. It’s not for his sake that we
repent. His unity is unbroken. It’s our heads that get broken.

Now whilst we’re affirming things to be good or bad, you
can’t reach that state, that Edenic state …

Yes.

Now if we’ve learned that this experience we’ve had
isn’t very good for us, we don’t like it, is that impulse
sufficient to take us back?

No. You stress one
side, and you make a mistake. What you have to define is that all the
ideas that wanted to force you back, you thought were bad
things. You now know that they are good things, because they are
forcing you back. But they were bad things. Boehme handles it by
saying that the devil’s called the bad good, and the angel’s
called the good, good. You’re in a period — you’re
driving out from your centre into the material world, you’re
really doing bad things that are good for you — because they’ll
send you back. And you must assert both of these, and yet see that
tube, with a force going in the opposite direction.

When
you go into material world you are going into slavery, because you
are becoming more and more subject to stimulus from outside and
you’re losing your autonomy. And yet, if you don’t get a
good knock on the head when you do drive out, you will never turn
back. So as Boehme says, the worst is as good as the best. A
good bang on the head can make you think.

The East

Why is the word celestial used for the east as well as for
the higher things?

Well, remember there
are two kinds of east — the geographical east, which is a
romantic concept really, in our sense, and the heavenly east or the
mystic east, which is the inside of a being. So if we take a little
sphere and we write E for East in its centre, because that east is
yeast or eerie to arise, the east, yes, and the west is all the way
round it — it is the perimeter. Now it’s very important
because this is the reality, the other is a romantic thing. The east
is nowhere on the Earth is it? It’s simply a globe,
geographically. But the centre of a being, that’s the nucleus
in an egg.

From which the power is
pushing out is the east, the yeast, the ‘yes’,
the point of arising, the orient, the mystical Zion,
the Eden, and so on.

The Pi Law Stone

It is said for instance
in Jewish mysticism, that when a man doesn’t have any children
at all, he will have to reincarnate and come back and have another
try. But if he wants to go to heaven he must take care, that when he
dies he is in Palestine. Now Palestine is the Pi Law Stone. It means
he must have a very, very clear sense of the geometry, the classic
mode, at death. [1:23:01]

Supposing you remember
at the point of death, supposing you were seventy, and you’d
had nothing to do with any beautiful girl since you were seventeen.
And you remembered one suddenly at the moment of death ... and then
died. Where do you think you’d go? To the land of pure
geometry? [laughter from the audience]. No, you wouldn’t. You’d
bounce right back in a horrible situation, the identical time and
place with your first birth ... not another one. This is the horrible
thing about the eternal recurrence: you can actually die and
reincarnate back at the same point — because all is eternal —
and relive exactly the same life you did before, just to get a look
at that girl. And if you don’t control that death memory,
you’ll always do it.

This is why it was said
that when Nietzsche examined the nature of the eternal recurrence it
helped to unseat his mind, because it was obviously stupid to go and
repeat the same life, not another one, not in the common sense of
reincarnating and having another try in another life, but actually to
go back into the same life to reincarnate at the same historic period
because it exists eternally, and to do the same stupid thing again
and again and again. And in order to avoid it, you must get dying
in Palestine.

You must, at the point
of death, Pi Law Stone yourself. That is to say, you must put
in your mind the pure geometry of the sphere, and say, No matter
what world it is, no matter what beings there are, they are all no
more than this law expressed, and it is this law I affirm, and
hang onto it like mad. And if anybody comes to comfort you with a hot
water bottle at that moment, well, try to keep your mind on your Pi
Law Stone. Because that way you see the principle, and you will dodge
that crazy experience that you’ll otherwise relate to. It’s
a terrible concept, eternal recurrence, viewed like that.

A true one, is it?

Yes. When Nietzsche saw
it, it gave him a terrible fright, and he immediately went to work to
try to devise a method whereby you could dodge that stupid
recurrence, and set yourself such a target that it didn’t worry
you in the slightest if you did the same life every time. And you
would then affirm it.

In other words the
whole object is to live such a life that at the end of it you can
say, this is the one that I will do again. And until you reach
the target, that is, Pi Law Stone, you’d better keep changing
your object. And if you think that Palestine is called what it is
because of its significance geodetically, and those people who drove
into there, and then were dispersed from it, and have been gathered
back together in it now. And now somebody’s got to come with a
hammer, and beat on that stone very, very hard in the not far distant
future so that they’ll really know what they went out for, and
came back to ... because that’s going to complete the cycle.

They’ve really
got to fight for that stone. If you, when you see anything in the
news, try as an exercise to ask yourself, Which side of this
battle am I on, if any? Can I extricate myself from the judgements
involved?

It’s a fact that
the Arabic Republic are doing so-and-so and so-and-so. Those Arabs
are nomads. Arab is the same letters as Hebrew
actually, anagrammed round. These Hebrews are Eber6,
crosses over ... they go over, out of slop, into form. The Arabs keep
dodging form. The result is that other peoples are formed before
them, and then finally they realise that the Earth is quite small,
that deserts shrink on their aeroplane invasions, and that they will
have to settle down. But it’s late. And so they scramble to try
to make a social structure, to try to make a nation that can become
the very thing they’ve never wanted to be ... an integral unit.
And this again is dialectics. Whereas the people that wanted to make
that unit were dispersed throughout the world. And even today, the
few who have gone back can’t persuade the others to go back. So
that the Zion, if Zion is like a temple of God, namely with man, is
dispersed throughout the world. Not all Jews will go back to
Palestine, because now there are eleven among all the other nations.
You get the eleven in the parable, you put it in the fire, and
afterwards you come and look for it ... it’s all over the
place.

The Indian image of it
is salt, where the father says to his son, Take this salt, taste
it, now put it in the water. Leave it for a bit and come back. Now
taste the water at the top. Salty. Taste it at the bottom, it’s
salty. The salt has gone all the way through. That salt means
savvy, consciousness ... the sting of sense. And it has been
dispersed through all nations, simply because one block-headed,
stiff-necked, arrogant crew were driven by their own internal
necessities to look for a God of Armies, a God of Victories who would
fight for them.

And he has.

And in the process,
he’s scattered them about so they can get their experiences to
come back, and again give out the law from a centre, on a new level.
Meanwhile, they’ve left in all the other parts of the world
their representatives, to assimilate and take the message. But the
important thing is to realise that as an existent being you cannot
escape polarity, and therefore whatever you are doing on the outside,
know that the contrary is being done on the inside. And watch it and
become aware of it. So you don’t get any false concept in
yourself when you do an external act, and say Oh, I’m a
decent bloke, I just gave tuppence to that fellow, because you
have internally the exact opposite ... you were robbing him.

Get that rule. To see
this polar relation inside and out, above and below, all the time, is
to drive yourself backwards from the material world…..

[Break
in recording]

….there is an
utility in the exercise, yes.

Is it valuable to do that?

Oh yes. Providing you
pick a decent idea. If it’s a particular idea with a particular
concept of good and evil attached to it, you’ll precipitate
yourself into a particular situation that will refute you.

So immediately we get hold of an idea…

…it will invert
unless the idea itself is an idea of a pair of opposites which can’t
invert. Your best idea is, when you go to bed at night, assert this
absolute polarisation of the infinite in the finite, and suspend
judgement. Say, Eden is where I’d like to be, and
deliberately put yourself in that state of non-judgement. Now that’s
a hard exercise to do, because when you go to bed at night the usual
thing is that the mind starts judging all the day’s events and
the people that have been in it ... saying rude things about most of
them. You know about that do you? [this said soto voce as an
aside]

Yes. [with a chuckle]

Yes. Remember that all
judgements of the order that the lower mind makes are purely
mechanical. So it’s bound to be against a painful physical
situation as such, and for pleasure as such. So it’s bound to
praise all those beings that think that they’re nice beings
who’ll be associated with pleasurable situations, and to
condemn all those beings that have been associated with painful ones.

Lots of little boys at
school say, When I’m big enough, I’m going to bop that
fellow who’s teaching me, because he’s been a source of
pain. He’s required that little boy to do something that
the little boy didn’t want to do ... even if it was only spell
a word correctly. In the same way that a child is almost ambivalent
in its will towards its parents, it needs them for nourishment and
protection and it hates them because they impose on it. They even
make it bring coal up or something like that ... when it’s
trying to play. These things add up. So there’s always this
ambiguousness, in the attitude towards the parents, of a child.

[Khen] The opposition of those ideas, can merely be used or could
be used as the justification for prodigality, couldn’t it? You
might say, alright, I’m misbehaving externally but right idea
is going on internally.

Well, the man that
tried to use it in that sense, would have been saying only half of
the truth, wouldn’t he. If he actually said to himself, I’ll
use the idea, he would not have said at the same moment, I
will not use the idea. You have to say this pair of opposites in
order to push yourself beyond the stimulus.

[Khen] You still have your reaction to the stimulus ...

Yes. The statement
itself is purely reactive.

Pride

[Khen] What happens with proud?

Yes. What happens with
proud. Well, proud is one of the words for which we could say
the synonym tumescent is an equivalent, couldn’t we? And
that means packed with energy. And proud behaviour is really
the behaviour of a being when the energy inside has come to the point
where it must act or he will burst.

[Khen] Mm.

You could see the
application in various fields.

[Khen] Yes …yes.

There’s a drift
of energy to a centre from the field, and it packs in the centre
until something has got to happen. You hear this statement
clinically, over and over again, of psychological cases and so on,
they said, Something must happen. They’re really talking
about an eternal drift of energy towards certain centres. And those
centres then become loaded. They are finite centres and they can’t
take any more of it ... and yet more is coming in and in. They start
to hit out somewhere. It’s the same principle as lightning in
the sky, piling up, it charges until it must drive. So that the
behaviour of a person who is like that, is simply evidence that
certain centres in him — they’re usually sexual centres —
are piling up energy, and that he feels actually endangered unless he
expresses it.

[Khen] When those energies are piling up ,that would be equivalent
to the time of darkness that Paul talks about7.
It would be difficult would it, to work in that particular period?
That is, to work against the final precipitation of his energies as…

Yes. Well,

[Khen] …I’m talking now, psychologically...

Yes, psychologically it
is recommended when you feel that build up, to go and do something
useful with it ... before it’s got time to strike.

[Khen] Like trying to work out your thing last week…

Yes, or make a new
gramophone table or something. Certainly to use the energies up.

[Charley Blythe] You’re giving a different meaning to the
word ‘proud’ to the common meaning.

Well you give me the
common meaning.

[Charley Blythe] The common meaning, say, is that when someone
thinks that he’s a pretty good person. He thinks himself as a
good person.

Do you mean, morally?

[Charley Blythe] Yeah. He likes other people to know. He likes to
show other people that he thinks he’s a good person. Isn’t
that pride?

Do you mean morally on
that? Because you find pride of muscle, pride of reason, pride of
aesthetic sensitivity. I was taught by my father that the three mini
kinds of pride,

pride of muscle
which is fairly easy to cure with a hammer,

pride of reason
which is a bit harder to cure, it takes longer, because you have to
disprove it with logic,

and pride of the
heart, which is very hard to cure because it’s impervious to
being hit with physical force, and it’s impervious to reasons,
so it can only reform itself from the inside.

But in all cases, it
means, I have more of it than you have. Whether it’s
energy at the physical level in muscle, or of reason, or of feelings
... pride feelings. A surcharge of energy is the idea.

[Charley Blythe] We generally in appearances, say that that man’s
proud, don’t we?

Yes we mean it’s
considered he has got more of something than we have.

[Charley Blythe] Yes.

It’s this more
that’s the idea in tumescence. Fullness, surcharge, whether
surcharge of moral qualities, or of mutton-headed muscularity, or
whatever it is, it’s a surcharge that we’re
talking about.

Some people,
apparently, have said, Proud about nothing, but they’re
still proud because they feel an inherent value in themselves, and
have not the faintest idea that they do. But they can feel it. And it
means that energy is in a certain centre going like that. When they
feel it, there’s a lull. I’ve got somebody with me,
because there’s that feeling there. You say what is it? Well, I
don’t know. Well it’s not curable if you can’t
define it. You have to wait for that fellow to explode in the
situation and then something taps him.

Lucifer

[Charley Blythe] They say pride always comes before a fall.

Before a fall, the fall
of energy from this centre. It’s got to build up the lightning
bolt and then it falls. The reference is to Lucifer isn’t
it?...

[Charley Blythe] Yes.

…who is the
highest and favourite angel of the creator. He’s the most
powerful. He’s defined as the brightest of the lot. He’s
absolutely packed with energies, light and power. And it’s
because he’s surcharged, he thinks, I must give ... to these
inferior beings. Now if he gives, he will diminish as a finite,
won’t he?

Mm.

So he’s really
dependent on an infinite influx before he can give infinitely.

[Charley Blythe] Yes.

So, the statement, he
commits the sin of pride, pride is there defined as a dividing
fire. All the energies in him twirl round, and he says, I am the
greatest. I will gather to me all the energies of infinity, and then
I will distribute them to the angelic host, and they will know that I
am god. But really, infinity is god. So it’s the first
statement of idolatry, isn’t it? Yet it depends on a surcharge
of power inside yourself. All the ones that are very far away from
his level, worship him. The ones that were nearly at his level,
envied him.

Humility

[Charley Blythe] Well, what would be the opposite of pride, then?

Humility.

Is meek the opposite of pride?

One of its aspects,
yes. Humility is the opposite ... thus the word humus,
earth. Earth, remember, you are earth. Thus thou art, and unto dust
thou shall return. Humus, the earth, humility. Because when this
super-being — the Luciferan being — didn’t look at
infinity as his source of energy, but considered it was in himself,
then, if the myth corresponds with the process in himself, it was
because he was surcharged with energy more than any other being, that
made him say, I, am giving light to these beings ... and to
discount infinity. And immediately after that he grabbed at power.

And you know when you
grab at air with your hands it goes out through your fingers. And in
the same way it is said that as he grabbed then the whole world stood
in the curse. That is, as he grabbed like that, spirit, which air
symbolises, simply disappeared between his brothers. So he found he
grabbed himself ... and that meant the gross material world.

Now it’s on the
basis of the gross material world that we stand in our humility. And
that is the thing to remind us. We have a gross body. Let the proud
man make that gross body behave first. Because now it’s been
appended to him until he can absolutely control it he has no
justification whatever for pretending to be merely of celestial
origin.

[Charley Blythe] What about two
men who are proud — and they have the same concept of each
other?

Owing to the inequality
of finites, one of them is prouder than the other.

[Charley Blythe] You have cases of men due really to pride,
challenge each other to the duel. And each one might be as proud as
the other, and thinks he’s better than the other?...

Mm. They have
occasionally shot each other dead, haven’t they?

[Charley Blythe] Yes.

But not always in the
same spot.

[Another audience member X] You did say that you get an opposite
to humble, actually. You said that if we’re one thing
outwardly, we’re another thing inwardly, you see.

That’s right.

[X] Now if we’re humble outwardly, does that mean to say
that we’re proud inwardly?

Oh, yes.

[X] And if we’re proud outwardly we’re humble
inwardly?

Oh, yes.

[X] Are we aware of this situation. Is this the way you mean it?

You’ve got to
become aware of it.

[X] You’ve got to become aware of it?

Yes. When you become
aware of it, you release yourself from the pairs of opposites.

[Khen] What about ‘proud flesh’ externally, in the
medical sense, where there is a contraction of flesh? Is there an
internal state, opposite to that, in the physical body?

In that zone?

[Khen] Yes.

The zone itself has a
field, which is exactly doing the opposite to that physical thing.

[Khen] So, would it be possible…

…do you mean
that….

[Khen] …can I continue? Would it be possible within that
physical field to contact the inner causal field and reverse the
situation, or at least equate, balance the situation so that you
could disperse the pain or what we would term the proud flesh?

Oh, yes.

[Charlie Blythe] If we must all become the opposites by becoming
aware of them, how do we reconcile that with having been told that we
must be, what was the word, be in humility? How can we reconcile
humility with overcoming opposites?

Humility overcoming the
opposites?

[Charlie Blythe] We’re told that we must be humble.

By whom?

[Charlie Blythe] Um… well I used the wrong word there? Um.
I’m not sure now which word I should use.

Well they will have
conditioned your whole thought process.

[Charlie Blythe] I’m trying to think of the sense of the
word.

One is the Logos
Christ. And the other is the government.

[Charlie Blythe] The other is what?

The government.

[Charlie Blythe] No, I wasn’t thinking of any meaning, the
government like, actually, um,

[Khen Ratcliffe] How about the negative sense ... not-proud?

[Charlie Blythe] Well that’s the opposite of proud, isn’t
it — not proud? By becoming aware what we must get away from?

It’s not a true
opposite ... simply to negate a thing. It just scrubs it out of your
mind, it means nothing, that.

[Charlie Blythe] I’d better leave this for the time being,
until I get it sorted out.

Well, remember, the
term you use to start thinking about it, is going to condition what
you think.

[Charlie Blythe] Yes, well I’ll sort it out and I’ll
ask you another time.

[X] I’ve noticed that occasionally when I speak to you, a
certain amount of discomfort there. Now could say, I feel a little
bit ashamed for some reason, it could have been because unconsciously
there are things which are quite shameless calling you names, you
see.

Yes that’s right.
Yes.

[X] I’ve come aware of what those things are as I find
them..

Yes. A young fellow,
about three years ago, was in a similar state to that, and he
couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. And he was
getting so tense internally, you know, through driving on this, that
I watched a little bit. And after he’d had a few bad nights I
said to him, I want you to do an exercise faithfully, will you do
it?

And he said, Yes.

I said, Will you
promised to do it and not to modify what comes into your mind?

And he said, Will it
help?

And I said, Yes.

I said, Now go into
your room, get a lot of paper, and write down whatever comes into
your mind about me, and then show it to me.

Now he wrote down more
rude words on five pieces of paper in small handwriting, than he knew
he knew. And it started with my name, and then it said what I was.
And everything he’d ever heard in the whole of his life that
was rude about any being whatever that offended him, I am.

[X] I can remember a couple of names I used from a night
before.[laughter]

Well, this young
fellow….

[X] Not that it’s anything you’ve done against me…,

No, no ... it’s
just a focal point. If you remember this polarity ... it follows, if
I am doing you any good, I must be the devil.

It’s only two
days ago that a fellow, nearly my age, came to me and said, I
think I can now formulate something about my relation to you. He
said, I’ve got a group of sub-ents in me, who say, ‘always
do what he says, and listen very carefully to the advice, and make it
go wrong and then you can blame him’.

Now that was a clear
analysis. [1:47:46]

In actual fact, anybody
who’s honest with himself, will find filthy expressions and
dirty statements, about every person in their lives that have given
them any benefit whatever ... for a very simple reason. In principle,
the ego believes it should be able to benefit itself, doesn’t
it? So really, any good coming to it from outside is an imposition.
Because it says, Well I could have thought of that, and then I
could have actually done it, and then I could be telling him.

[X] Well I don’t feel like that.

You may not. Because
there are phases. That doesn’t mean to say you won’t.

[X] But does that mean I will?

Oh no. It may be that
you’ve already done it. You might not even have noticed it. You
might have already done it about somebody else ... because I’m
not the only trouble. I’m just a stimulus in the situation. I
could become objectified in somebody’s mind as the celestial
cesspool — you know, a sort of pile of rubbish — quite
easily. This is what psychologists call transference, in any case.
But whatever the problem is, it gradually accretes to a centre, and
it then turned into a rotten tomato and flung at some person. It is
really an accident that a person gets hit with it. In fact, most of
the quarrels that go on in families, and in marriage relations, and
so on, are no more than this tumescence, this build-up, this
proudness of energy compacting itself, suddenly letting fly at
anything ... even the cat. Anything can be its object. But the thing
tends to be its object that comes to an idea that you would have come
to in any case yourself later.

[Khen
utters an indistinct comment]

Yes.

[Y] Every mortal thing that you’ve said refers back to the
affection for the opposite, that targets everything as the opposite.

That four-letter word
means what men have, isn’t it? You know, for a man to take
anything from a man at all, is terrible ... in principle. It’s
like a woman listening to another woman. It’s just not done.
Only in the case of man, it’s even more ….????

There’s a
fundamental drive in a man that says, given the time and the
opportunities, I could do it. Yet in fact, many men have been so
busy being something else that they haven’t got round to it.
It’s a matter of no importance whatever, because we all
co-exist in absolute simultaneity in there.

[Charlie Blythe] What it
seems to me though, is that someone is able to help you in some way,
that you, you, ifyou
like, call him a devil….

That simply means that
you are not in contact — at the moment of saying it — at
this moment. With that part of yourself it automatically says things
about it. It merely means that there are unconscious parts of your
mind where those things are going on, that you don’t know
about.

[q4] So you must have had special advantages.

[Charlie Blythe] You might be being told something in front of
other people who you would like to think that you knew it all
already. You might be willing to, then.

You can resent being
told it in private. Only, it wouldn’t become manifest to you,
because the stimulus situation would have provoked the egotism. It
would just sink. There is always the fear underneath that maybe,
someday, he might just stand up and say, I told you that.

I was once introduced
to some people, after a pupil of mine had been coming to me for
fifteen years, and he’d been going and lecturing in a certain
place, and one occasion he introduced me, through no merit of his
own, to an accident, to this group of people on an evening when a
lecture was being given, and he didn’t know what to do about
it.

And he said to me, I
suppose I ought to go through with this.

And I said, Of
course.

And he started, and
went on, and about three quarters of the way through, stopped dead.

And he said, I’d
like Mr. Halliday to finish this lecture.

And his ears were
burning, and he felt terrible. And he couldn’t carry on, and he
turned round and he was flat out. So I finished it. And afterwards
the president of this organisation said to me, I can tell where
you got your knowledge from ….you see?

And as he said this,
this poor fellow had become absolutely incapable of saying anything
about it. He just froze like that. He didn’t know what I was
going to say, and I said nothing. And when we got outside and we
drove off, he was absolutely silent. And do you know, he became like
dead ???????? for about six months on account of that. He just
couldn’t talk to me, he didn’t phone me, he didn’t
come to see me, he didn’t do anything, because he felt that he
should have said, at that moment, it’s the other way round.
And he was really making himself ill when I spoke to him about it.

And I said, Don’t
forget, in there, nobody teaches anybody. It is all co-existent,
simultaneous.

Like it says in the
book, In that day, no man shall teach any man of god for all know
him.8

It’s only an
action in the time that a word comes out of one mouth rather than
another, because in actual fact, the word that comes out of my mind
is determined by you ... not by me. Because if you don’t
develop in a certain way from your own centre, then no demand is made
and if no demand is made, I can’t move. And that’s true
with everybody.

A woman can’t
feed a child unless there is a child to feed. See? Nietzsche’s
idea of the sun borrowed ... [the recording trails off here]

8
1John 2:27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth
in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie,
and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.